


A Boy Half There

by Tvieandli



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman and Robin (Comics), Nightwing (Comics)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-02
Updated: 2016-02-29
Packaged: 2017-12-04 02:47:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,076
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/705645
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tvieandli/pseuds/Tvieandli
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dick is being haunted by the tapping sounds on his window, and the voice of a little boy, begging to be let in.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

"Grayson." 

There's a tippity-tapping sound on the window. The sound of a harsh whisper. His name hissed over and over again against the glass. 

Dick sits up in his bed. The light from the window is dull and yellow, cast off from the city's luminescence, reflected against the rain a million times until it glows onto the floor, over his duvet, and into his eyes. The sound is just the rain, but he still squints out at it, trying to see if there's anything out there. A ridiculous thought, considering he's on the fifth floor, and the fire escape doesn't run past his window.

"Grayson," the hiss comes again, and he freezes up because it almost sounds like someone's in the room. He looks around wildly to see who it is, but there's nobody. It must be two in the morning. He has work tomorrow, things he needs to get done, and yet he's up. Jumping at shadows.

"Grayson."

He lies back down slowly, and pulls the blanket back over his head, hiding himself away. 

"Grayson," the voice says again, insistent, and closer than ever. The tap-tap-taping resumes. "Let me in." 

Dick peeks out from under the covers, and catches a shadow falling over his window for a split second before disappearing. His breath catches hard in his throat.

"Grayson," it sing songs. "It's cold in the rain." 

There's a sudden sound, like nails scratching down the window screen, metal moaning at the tug of fingernails. The shadowy shape of two hands falls over his bedroom.

"Let me in!" the voice hisses again, somehow loud enough to be heard over the scraping scream of his screen.

The scratching stops, and there's silence. Dick waits. Stock still. Paralyzed. The screen gives a violent shiver, as if it's being shaken in it's frame, and then stops. Interrupted by a knock on the door.

"Dick! You in there?" Jason calls. He must have let himself into the living room. "I brought beer."

Dick opens the door, and feels relief wash over him when it is just Jason, holding a case of beer in one hand. Dick wraps his arm around his "little brother" and pulls him inside. Jason, to his credit, doesn't ask why Dick's acting funny.

 

Dick is sitting in the living room, watching some late night television on his own when there's a sudden banging. The door rattles in it's frame like someone's pounding against it. 

"Grayson!" It's the same voice, pitched higher with fright, calling his name with an odd, accented lilt he can't place. "Grayson, let me in, he's here! He's going to take me away back to mother!"

He curls up underneath his blanket, listening, staring horror struck at the door. The banging continues, and is suddenly shorted out by a huge whump. Like a tiny body hitting the hard wood. There's a sudden grunting sound, and a shill screeching. 

And then he's greeted with a sudden silence. Slowly, he gets up, and crosses to the door. When he opens it, he expects to see blood, or a dead body. Instead he sees the empty hallway.

 

"I think I'm going crazy."

Babs looks confused. "Why do you say that?" she asks, stirring her coffee.

"I keep hearing this little boy. He's begging me to let him into my apartment. He'll tell me it's cold out, or that someone's coming to take him back to his mother. And he'll bang on the door calling my name. But he's never there when I open it, and I know he's not real."

"Sounds like a haunting," Babs says jokingly, hopping up backwards onto his kitchen counter.

"I'm being serious, Babs."

"Oh, lighten up, Dick. It'll pass. You just need more sleep is all."

 

"Grayson?"

Dick sits up in his bed, and looks toward the door. There's a light streaming in from the crack between it and the floor.

"Are you awake?"

He doesn't answer, and when he's quiet, he hears the boy give a heavy sigh. His little, aristocratic voice heavy with some sort of emotion. And then he starts singing. It's a song that sounds older than time in some lilting, middle eastern language. Dick sits, staring at the door, listening until the boy stops singing, and sighs again.

"Why won't you talk to me?" he asks.

Dick doesn't answer.

"I know you're awake in there, Grayson. I know you."

Dick bites his tongue.

"Please let me in?" the boy whispers. "I'll be good. I promise to do whatever father says, just please stop doing this."

There's a long moment of silence, and then the door rattles in it's frame, and there's a great booming sound as if the boy's struck hard against it. 

"Fine! I never needed you anyway!"

Tiny feet stomp off down the hallway, and the light goes off. Dick lies back down in his bed and pretends like it didn't happen.

 

"Grayson! Grayson, get up it's time for patrol!"

Dick sits up in bed, wiping the drool off his face.

"Father's mad at you for being late. He says if you're not down in three minutes, he's going to leave you behind."

"Okay," Dick says sleepily, pushing himself out of bed, and crossing to open the door. When the door does open, there's no one in the hall, and it's dark. And as he's staring down at the floor, he remembers that he doesn't know what any of that meant. Who was father, and what was he meant to be patrolling?

 

"Perhaps it's a repressed past life." Leslie says. Dick's face screws up in confusion. "Someone you feel you owe it to to be there for. Someone you felt you let down."

"Why would he be haunting me? How do you know I'm not nuts?"

Leslie smiles at him. "Maybe you should try letting him in."

 

"Grayson?"

"Yeah?" Dick asks, sitting up in bed. 

It's raining again, and there's a tiny shadow pressed up against his window, balanced on the sill. "Can I come in?"

Reluctantly, Dick slides out of bed, and pushes the window up. Rain water splashes onto the hard wood, and a little boy in what looks like a superhero costume slides in through the open space. He's graceful in a way that he really shouldn't be at that age, bending and twisting like he's a deadly viper. He smells like leather and polyester. His eyes are covered by a mask which he rips off, pulling away some of the skin with it.

"Father sent me to my room again, but it smells like dog in there because of Titus. If I'm intruding you can tell me to leave," he says, never quite making eye contact, never quite looking up, but the resemblance he bares to Bruce is uncanny.

"You can stay if you want," Dick says. "Let's dry you off first though. Don't want you getting everything all wet." He's trying to be as casual as possible, gathering towels, and some dry pajamas. The costume finds itself on the floor in the corner, replaced by boxers and an overlarge wife beater that makes the kid's skin look swarthy and rich.

"Come on, kiddo," Dick says, ushering the boy toward the bed. Harsh blue eyes cut up into his for a second. The first time since he let the boy in.

"Don't call me that."

"Then what do you want me to call you?"

"My name."

Dick silently curses his luck as he tucks the kid into his bed. He makes for the couch, but a tiny hand wraps tight around his wrist.

"What's up?" he asks. The boy looks away, and tuts under his breath, but he doesn't let go until Dick realizes he's being asked to stay.

He climbs in to bed next to the kid, who rolls up into his arms, and promptly drops off to sleep.

 

He wakes up in the morning alone, and cold from leaving the window open. There's water splashed on the floor from the rain getting in, and he's convinced he's utterly bonkers, until he finds the little, green leather mask on the floor shoved halfway under his bed.

 

"What do you think?" he asks Babs, as she turns it over in her hands. 

"You let this crazy kid in a superhero costume sleep in your bed?" Babs asks.

"He couldn't have been more than ten, Babs. What's the worst he could have done?"

"Killed you in your sleep maybe? I think you should lock your doors and windows."

"He's harmless. All he wanted was some cuddles, and now I've got proof he's real."

Babs shrugs. "Whatever," she says, but she's eyeing the mask like it's going to spring to life and kill them both with their Taco Bell.

 

tap tap tap 

"Grayson."

Dick opens the window, and the boy slides in once more. The same strange fluidity to his movements, except there's a bit of falter this time. He's favoring his right side.

"What happened?" he asks.

"Life happened, the boy says, unzipping the red tunic of his suit, and brandishing a little hole in his side. It's bleeding down his thigh and onto the floor. Dick hisses. "Mother sent another one of her assassins. This one wasn't half bad," he says, as if this is as casual as talking about the weather.

He begins undressing, dropping article after article of clothing to the ground, completely ignoring the wound. Dick stops him by clapping his hands down on the boy's shoulders. He freezes, blue eyes wide with questions that are lined with threats.

"We need to get you some first aid," Dick says. 

He has a feeling that this boy doesn't want to go to the hospital, so he steers him into the bathroom instead, and sits him down on the toilet. Then he pulls out the first aid kit, and starts dabbing at the wound with a cotton ball that he soaked in rubbing alcohol.

"Who are you, Pennyworth?" the boy asks, attempting to bat his hand away. "That stings, Grayson. Stop it."

"I don't want you getting an infection," Dick says, flicking the boys hand, and watching him pout out of the corner of his eye as he keeps "doctoring".

"Okay, kiddo," He says when he's done.

The boy stiffens immediately. "Don't call me that."

"Then what should I call you?" Dick asks again.

"Call me by my name. Call me Damian." Dick smiles at the small triumph. 

"OK, Damian," he says. Damian tuts, and Dick pushes him into bed.

 

In the morning he's alone again, but there are bandages missing from his first aid kit, and he doubts the blood will ever come up off the floor. He takes pictures of it to show Babs.

Damian doesn't come that night, and Dick sits up until four o'clock worrying.

"He didn't show up last night."

Babs sighs on the other end of the line.

"No, Babs. You don't get it. The last time I saw him he'd been stabbed. He could be dead."

"I know you're worried, Dick but it's really none of your business."

"I'm sorry, but there's a kid who needs help. I think it's time I made it my business."

 

Damian's sitting on his bed when he gets home from work. Dick almost doesn't recognize him in normal clothes. He has a backpack slung over his arm.

"What's up, Kiddo?" Dick asks.

Damian grimaces and tuts, but he doesn't say anything about the pet name.

"I brought some things," he says noncommittally. Dick chuckles.

"What happened to your costume?"

"My uniform," Damian corrects tersely, "is in the bag. Along with my toothbrush and a change of clothing. Father is being rather insufferable today."

"What'd he do this time?"

"He's holding Titus until I can "behave myself"," Damian says.

"That sucks. I'm sure you miss him," Dick says, imagining a great tyrant of a father holding a teddy bear hostage for good behavior.

"He's just a dog, Grayson. Pennyworth will take care of him."

Close enough. 

Damian strips himself to his underwear and slides under the covers, watching Dick with his piercing, blue eyes. He looks like a turtle hiding in it's shell. Dick laughs as he climbs into bed next to him.

 

He wakes up sometime in the middle of the night, to see Damian dressing in his "uniform". He has just enough forethought to snap a picture on his phone as Damian pulls his hood up. The result is a backlit, barely detailed figure with glowing eyes. Dick thinks it's rather impressive.

 

Babs' eyes go wide when Dick shows her the picture. It's like it never really clicked until now that this kid is real. She insists he send it to her, and then doctors it until she can see every detail from the big R on his chest, to the stitching in his gloves.

"You were right about his age," she says when she calls him up four hours later. "Judging by his proportions he's ten or eleven. But here's the thing, and this is weird. The kid is ripped. Like works out everyday for hours ripped."

"I know, I've seen him without his shirt on. He's covered in scars too."

"I don't know about this kid, Dick. There's something not right about all this."

"I don't think he's going to hurt me. For what ever reason he trusts me. That's good enough."  
"Your funeral."

 

Dick gets home late that night, and falls into bed exhausted. At some point, he becomes aware of someone or something crawling over him. He doesn't move, opting instead to wait. Damian sits straddling his stomach.

"Grayson?" the whisper is familiar by now. Almost like Damian enjoys saying his name in some odd way. He doesn't answer, so Damian leans forward, and touches his face. palms splayed across cheeks, thumbs lying beside the bridge of his nose. He feels Damian lean forward, and kiss the tip if his nose.

Then, like it's some secret ritual. Like he doesn't want anyone to know, he slides slowly underneath the covers beside him.

 

Dick's nose still tingles in the morning when he wakes up to find a little boy sleeping next to him. He snaps another picture with his phone, and turns the alarm off before it wakes him up. As he's getting out of bed he stops, all at once utterly shocked by the realization that this is a little kid. 

He's known that. He knew that since the boy started pounding on his front door, but this is different. It's the first time he's ever really seen it. The hidden innocence that Damian's buried under layers of trauma. Dick lies back down, and dials his work number.

"Amy? Hey, yeah. I'm sorry, I can't come in today."

"Why? You sick?"

"No. Not exactly. But I have to watch my little brother, and he is. He's got a temperature, and I'm kind of worried, because dad would kill me if I left him alone like this."

"Officer Dick Grayson," Amy says, half laughing. "Baby sitter extraordinaire."

"Yeah. Yeah. I'll see you tomorrow."

"Hey, Grayson?"

"Yeah?"

"Bring in pictures. I'd love to see your baby brother."

"Sure thing, boss."

Damian's staring at him when he hangs up the phone, unnerving eyes calculating.

"Hey there, Little D." Damian's nose scrunches up like he's heard that a million times before. "Wanna play hooky with me today?"

Damian gives him a wary look.

"I'll make breakfast."

"You mean toaster grilled cheese and cereal?" Damian asks. Dick laughs.

"I'll call Babs. She'll make breakfast."

 

Babs shows up with groceries, chattering quickly, and bustles through the door. She's set them down on the kitchen counter before she even realizes Damian's sitting on the couch watching morning cartoons. She pauses in pulling eggs out of the plastic bag, and just stares at him.

"Is that him?"

Damian's eyes cut over to them, bright, and sharp, and caustic. 

"Yeah."

"I didn't notice the interracial mix of features in the picture you sent me, or the skin tone," She says quietly, pulling a pan down off the rack. She cracks an egg into it, and turns the heat on. "God, he looks like Bruce."

Damian's eyes narrow further.

"I noticed," Dick says.

"But you didn't tell me. Or him for that matter." 

There's a tiny tutting sound, and Dick hears Damian shifting on the couch, but when he looks up, Damian's eyes are still trained on him, hard, and narrowed, and for the first time they're distrusting.

Dick swallows hard. There's a sudden chill running down his spine as Damian stands up.

"Grayson," he says, before sliding seamlessly into another language. It sounds vaguely like Arabic, but Dick doesn't understand a word despite the fact that he gets the feeling he's supposed to.

Damian takes a step forward, and repeats himself, lip curling back at the look of confusion on Dick's face.

Babs' face is lax with shock, and her hand tightens on Dick's forearm.

"Who are you?" Damian asks. "Why have you lost the language of my family. I spent a full year teaching you. Why would I not look like my father?"

"Dami, I-"

"Do you even bleed, impostor?"

The knife comes out of nowhere, and whizzes by his head with trained accuracy, slicing through his cheek just enough to draw blood, and lodging itself in the wood of a cabinet door. 

"And you, Oracle," he says, turning on Barbra. "Why are you walking? How long has this sham been going on?"

Dick steps forward, reaching out in an attempt to calm the boy. The take down is so quick Dick doesn't even know what hit him. Suddenly he's on the ground, with Damian standing over him, glaring at Babs.

Dick reaches up to try and throw the boy off him, but his hand is snatched up, fingers bent backward. "Your police training won't help you here, Grayson. You have to remember what my father taught you."

Dick squirms trying to remember some of the more advanced martial arts moves he'd learned. 

"Remember what he taught you! Are you so lost and pathetic that you have forgotten our life's work?"

Dick tries again to throw the boy off, but Damian's knee comes down into his sternum, winding him.

"Remember!"

Babs makes a panicked noise, and rushes forward, but Damian fixes her with a glare, stopping her dead in her tracks.

"Are you so dull that you would forget years of training? Are you so fucking retarded that you would forget the Batman?"

Dick goes limp, eyes wide.

"You took an oath," Damian's eyes are so very sincere, like he speaks the utmost truth. "We took an oath," he says over, and something sparks in Dick's mind. Some half remembered night, standing in a dark place, his hand placed in a larger hand, staring into the white lenses of a mask similar to Damian's as he spoke the words of an eternal promise.

"Have you truly forgotten all that we stand for?" Damian sounds almost pleading. "I never imagined that when you left you wanted so badly to be away from us you would do something like forgetting it all. But this explains it, doesn't it? This explains why you refuse to answer my phone calls. Why you would not let me in. Father would be ashamed of you."

Damian steps back, glaring at the both of them. "You can keep your breakfast. Don't look for me."


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> okay so a lot of people have asked me for this for 3 years and been really nice abut it and this is one of those things i always felt bad about not finishing idk if this will finish it but here's a completely unbetaed thing. thank you all for commenting!

There are weeks, months, of nothing. Dick wakes up in the middle of the night sometimes, thinking maybe there's been a shadow at the window or a sound at the door, but there isn't ever a sign of anything. 

Babs asks a few questions at first but after a while she doesn't want to hear any more about it. It's just something he obsesses over. 

Early on, he goes to Bruce and asks about Damian, but Bruce is just as clueless as he is. He doesn't know what 'Batman' means either. Damian is only more of a mystery now than he'd been as a voice on the other side of the door. 

Dick tries looking through Bruce's exes trying to see who was even a racial match for the kid. A diverse group of women, almost all models and actresses, a few look like they could be right but none really strike him. He calls a few old phone numbers and runs into nothing but dead ends.

No answers come. 

Damian being a child, he should have be easy enough to find but he'd disappeared into thin air like a pro. Not even putting an APB out on the kid turns up anything useful. No children could be found who even shared his particular accent, the thing Dick had found most distinctive about him beside the pattern of scars on his body, the thickest of them consistent with organ transplants and other intensive lifesaving work. 

After the silence stretches into a third month, he's starting to give up. Babs tells him it's for the best. He doesn't know what to think, considering how young Damian is, how vulnerable a child is at that age, even if he seems to have control of himself. He can't imagine where Damian is living, if he's even with an adult. He'd spoken as if he lived with Bruce but Bruce had never heard of the kid. There are no answers. 

Dick doesn't even know what kind of a dog Titus is, and can't use that as a frame of reference in any search. It's like the whole thing was just a massive hoax.

He still has that discarded mask, and the pictures on his phone, but they are the only precious pieces of evidence that the boy even exists.

He must have run away from home. He must be out in the cold somewhere and there's nothing Dick can do. His boss had been understanding, she'd given him as much help as she could, but without any leads, it;s over. Damian is a cold case. His file is iced.

 

It's summer. Late in August, when the screen in Dick's window rattled suddenly, waking him up. He starts awake, and catches himself staring at the window like an awestruck tourist. There's a tiny silhouette leaned up against his window, fingers hooked up on the screen like a kitten trying to climb inside.

Dick doesn't say anything as he gets out of bed and walks as quietly as he can to the window. He pushes it open, and reaches out to pull the screen in carefully, almost meticulously.

Damian half slides and half falls through onto his bedroom floor, landing on his knees in a puddle of yellow and black kevlar cape. They sit there in silence a long time, Dick staring at the boy, Damian refusing to look at him. It's oddly reminiscent of their first meeting. The terse silence between Damian's biting words, the way the boy had avoided eye contact.

"Damian," Dick hears himself say, voice hesitant.

The boy takes a long, shaking breath in that rattles slowly over the line of his teeth where they're bare to the room. "Grayson," he says wispily as he pushes the breath back out. Dick hangs on the word like it's his only life line.

"I was worried," he tells the tiny crumpled figure. Damian shivers in a barely perceptible way despite the hot night. It makes Dick feel too large, standing over him like this, so he takes his knees to match the boy's pose. "I missed you."

Damian is silent. He draws tiny, shaking hands up from the floor, and peels his mask off slowly enough that Dick watches every fiber of glue separate from his cheeks and brows. The boy stares at the back of it's lenses in his lap for a moment before taking another long breath deep down into his lungs. "Father tried to keep me locked up after Nobody," he explains softly. "He's at the bottom of the bay now, and he'll never come back, but I still feel like he's out there. I feel like all those eyes are watching me. I feel like he's still holding me down. Father says it'll go away, but it hasn't done."

Dick stares at him owlishly, and he doesn't know what to say. He doesn't even know what Damian's talking about. 

"He told me he'd always own me. It think in a way he does," the boy adds and it's the most haunting thing he's ever heard out of a child's mouth even in his career as a cop. "It's like the way mother owns me," he adds, mouth barely moving around the words almost like they're too disturbing to really take full credit for saying. "Like father owns me."

Dick wonders if maybe he should lay a hand on Damian' shoulder, try to offer physical comfort, console him a bit. The shaking in the boys arms has increased since he slid through the window. Dick can't tell if he's hurt or not. Maybe he needs care. He's frozen with indecision.

"I'm never going to be my own person. Everyone else has already bought up every bit of me there was. I can't even be a share holder in my own body let alone my father's company. I hardly exist to the world because he keeps me away from all of it. My mother doesn't even want to look at me. She's torn between reclaiming what's hers and throwing me out all together and i've been replaced in her life as it is so her ownership doesn't even amount to anything anymore. She hates me. Father doesn't trust me. He seemed like he cared, Grayson. Father wanted me to talk about it. He told Pennyworth to ask me about it so i would 'work through the emotions' whatever that means. He just wants it all to go away so he doesn't have to face his failures. But Nobody understood. He really did. He knew me on the inside. He knew how I thought. No one's ever been that deep," He stops talking on a dime, and drops the mask on his thighs, burying his face in his hands.

"Can I touch you?" Dick asks, thinking about all the times he put his hands on Bruce to help but only managed to make everything worse.

Damian slumps into his side without answering anything, a warm weight against his ribs, vibrating elbows dug into his hip.

"I'm here," he assures softly. 

"Are you? Are you even you anymore? Do you even remember me or anything that happened between us?" the boy asks.

Dick can feel his mouth drying up. His tongue seems useless in articulating anything to this lost child looking for guidance and a connection to someone who didn't claim something of him as their own.

"No," he says honestly.

Damian goes deathly still, stiff like a corpse under his arm.

"And no one I've asked has ever heard anything about you. Not even Bruce."

He draws back slowly. His wide blue eyes look like they could have been ripped right off of Bruce's face and stuck onto his. "Father," he begins, and then pauses for a long time, "told you he'd never heard of me?" His voice sounds heart broken.

"I think there's been some sort of confusion. Is your father Bruce Wayne?" he asks the boy.

Damian nods slowly, looking on the verge of tears. "Bruce Wayne, CEO of Wayne Tech," another long pause, "Gotham City's Batman." 

Dick stares at him. That feeling he had watching Damian sleep that morning he woke up to find him still there- that this is a child, someone delicate and small even under all his hubris -washes back over him.

"I don't understand," he insists. "I missed you so much when you left. I thought you'd abandoned me. I don't understand why you're all being like this. I don't get it. Haven't i been through enough?" he asks softly.

"More than enough," Dick agrees. From what he's heard the kid say here alone that's true, and seeing his skin under his clothes, all those scars. Damian's life has been harder than maybe even Jasons from what Dick can tell sitting here right now.

"Then why?" he demands. "Why are you all doing this to me? Even after everything? Even after Nobody? What do you want from me? What do I have to prove?"

"Nothing, Damian," Dick insists.

The tears are sudden. They spill over like a cup filled past it's tension point. Damian covers them the moment they fall as if he's trying to push them back into his eyes with the heals of his palms.

"I just wanted you all to accept me! I thought this was my place but none of you want me here! No one wants me anywhere!" he wails, tiny little choked breaths causing hiccups in his speech.

"Maybe there's an answer for this," Dick suggests, trying to think quickly. "Does it seem like your father is lying about you existing when you talk to him?"

"He keeps me inside and doesn't like when the press gets pictures," Damian says despondently.

"But does he lie to us about you? Me and Time and Jason?" Dick presses.

"How could he? You've all met me."

"Damian, as far as I know I met you the night i first opened my window and let you in," Dick says. "Do you know what String Theory is?"

"Of course I know what that is. Father's talking about going to other dimensions all the time," Damian snaps. His face is still hidden behind his little fists, but he doesn't seem to be crying anymore.

"What if you've slipped through a crack or something? What if this isn't your version of me?" Dick asks.

Damian pulls his hands away from his face. "Then where is my Grayson?" he asks, words heavy on the ownership. There's longing there. Someone who's lost someone else. As if Dick is a hole that's been ripped in Damian's life by absence.

"I don't know," he says softly. It seems like a crazy explanation but it's all he can come up with.

"I need him," Damian insists softly. "I need the Bat who trained me. I need Nightwing."

"I'm sorry. I wish I knew what to do to fix this," Dick tells him.

"Take me to father," Damian demands, tiny words harsh in the dark.

Dick doesn't have the heart to refuse him.


End file.
